The disclosure relates to wireless energy transfer. Wireless energy transfer may for example, be useful in such applications as providing power to autonomous electrical or electronic devices.
Radiative modes of omni-directional antennas (which work very well for information transfer) are not suitable for such energy transfer, because a vast majority of energy is wasted into free space. Directed radiation modes, using lasers or highly-directional antennas, can be efficiently used for energy transfer, even for long distances (transfer distance LTRANS>>LDEV, where LDEV is the characteristic size of the device and/or the source), but require existence of an uninterruptible line-of-sight and a complicated tracking system in the case of mobile objects. Some transfer schemes rely on induction, but are typically restricted to very close-range (LTRANS<<LDEV) or low power (˜mW) energy transfers.
The rapid development of autonomous electronics of recent years (e.g. laptops, cell-phones, house-hold robots, that all typically rely on chemical energy storage) has led to an increased need for wireless energy transfer.